Steven Brill’s Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s
Schools celebrates the improbable consensus among conservative
Republicans, major foundations, Wall Street financiers, and the
Obama administration about school reform. Brill, a journalist and
entrepreneur, portrays the leaders of today’s reform movement as
heroes. They include Wendy Kopp, who created Teach for America
(TFA) and raised some $500 million for the organization over the
past decade; Jonathan Schnur, whom he credits as the architect of
the Obama administration’s $4.35 billion competition called Race
to the Top; Michelle Rhee, chancellor of schools in the District
of Columbia from 2007 to 2010; Joel Klein, chancellor of the New
York City public schools from 2002 to 2010 and now chief adviser
to Rupert Murdoch; Eva Moskowitz, leader of the Harlem Success
Academy charter school chain; and David Levin and Michael
Feinberg, founders of the KIPP charter schools.
Brill also lavishly praises the billionaire equity investors and
hedge fund managers who have financed the reform movement,
including Whitney Tilson, Ravenel Boykin Curry IV, John Petry, and
Joel Greenblatt. Brill writes reverentially about their glamorous
world. Curry, for example,
seems the typical preppy socialite. He and his wife have
homes in Manhattan (Central Park South), East Hampton, and the
Dominican Republic. His father, Ravenel Curry III, also runs a
money fund. He and his wife frequently appear in society columns,
and she’s a well-known high-end interior decorator.
A graduate of Yale and the Harvard Business School, Curry is
deeply involved in school reform.
The financiers of public school reform described here live in a
world of spectacular wealth. They believe in measurable outcomes;
their faith in test scores is greater than that of most educators,
who understand that standardized tests are not scientific
instruments and that scores on the tests represent only a small
part of what schools are expected to accomplish. The Wall Street
men have found a cause that is both “exciting and fun” and, as
Curry IV puts it, “because so many of us got interested in this at
the same time, you get to work with people who are your friends.”
It is unlikely that any of them have close personal connections to
public education, yet they have made it their mission to change
national education policy. School reform is their favorite cause,
and they like to think of themselves as leaders in the civil
rights movement of their day, something unusual for men of their
wealth and social status.
full:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/sep/29/school-reform-failing-grade/
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